Standard emoji in correspondence

[Stephanie118]

Anybody know if/when Airbnb will finally support basic emoji in correspondence? Just getting tired of <?> <?> garble characters in the main communication thread (via Airbnb app, therefore sync'd web and app, nice and central), when a guest replies with emoji.

Everybody uses emoji now. It's no surprise guests would reply to me with them, and sure, I'd like to know "how they're feeling" by seeing these basic things, but still the Airbnb app/site doesn't support them. 

Have waited quite awhile so I'm just wondering if anybody's heard.

[Stephanie118]

Oh--and it seems clear that guests have tuned their Airbnb preferences to receive centralized (sync'd) correspondence via SMS. So, they reply there like they do to any other text from any other person, with emoji, but that's a no-go for Airbnb. Just clarifying the garble characters and how they likely arrive.

[John134]

I have he same curiosity. Has anyone answered you Stephanie?

[Stephanie118]

Nope.

[Michele4]

That's exactly what I'm wondering too. Basic emoji work, everything else is black squares with a question mark

[Robin4]

@Stephanie118 @Michele4 @John134

Stephanie, I am Rob and I am a part of Airbnb Support, and we have been instructed by our employer not to use emoji's in our conversations with customers. The reason given for this is that there are many hundreds of emoji's now and each has a meaning. There is still a considerable percentage of the population who will be tempted to use an emoji without knowing or understanding it's meaning.....simply because they think it looks appropriate, and it's use could be seen as an offensive comment.

Stephanie, this may change over time but at this point we have been instructed not to use them in our conversations.

Happy Christmas....Cheers....Rob

[Michele4]

That's one way to see it, but then you have to technically prevent the use of them, otherwise customers apply them and too much information gets lost.

I have lots of guests from Korea or Hong Kong and they do communicate a lot through emoji and I'm forced to ask again and again what they mean

[Stephanie118]

Indeed, the point of this post is that Airbnb guests ALREADY do it. 90% of people around the world (it seems) use emoji. Airbnb telling Airbnb employees not to use them is irrelevant: what we're saying is that almost ALL our guests use them. They send them to me. And instead of seeing them, I get black diamonds with question marks. My guests send me an emoji and since I can't see it, I have no idea what they were trying to communicate.

[Michele4]

@Robin4

Do you mind giving us a more detailed explanation of what you mean?

Either allow emoji or remove the possibility to use them, I'm tired to have to constantly ask my guests what they mean by <?> or black squares...

🤔 😕 😔

[Mike11]

🙂

Ditto.

Everyone already uses them.

If the rule applies to Airbnb staff, then so be it, but it should not be applied to customers (guests and hosts).

[Mike11]

Yes! A picture speaks 1000 words.

[Itamar1]

This is very frustrating. I'm getting lots of emojis from guests, and I have no idea what they are. Come on airbnb, you are a technology giant, emojis are integral part of communication. You don't have to support hundreds of emojis, but at least the basic ones. 

[Giampaolo19]

It’s indeed absurd AirBnb doesn’t support emoji. They are a standard way for comunicating feelings and are very precious for any communications with the hosts. 

As software developer, however, I think the reason is that they cannot support them, technically speaking. Indeed if they would advise against them - they just would  warn the user or remove the Unicode character and not let the message display the replacement. this sounds more like a technical debt.

👎🏽

[Phil200]

I just wanted to say that I'm a long-time user of Airbnb, have hosted a couple times and then I guess May times, and I 100% agree with the original poster OP here ...

I ♥ OP

I am 😡 at Airbnb for this point. Airbnb, if your mission is really to connect the world more as you say, then you need to make it easier to communicate internationally... 🇺🇸🇯🇵🇦🇺🇬🇧🇮🇹🇲🇽🇨🇳

Emoji is the only International Language other than English, which most people globally can't speak the way that I and Brian Chesky (Airbnb founder) or other privileged Silicon Valley types (like I am too 🤔 ) can 

[Dale622]

Bump! I too would appreciate emoji support for guest correspondence. 

If AirBnB doesn't want listing titles to become cluttered with emoji, fine. But there's no reason to disallow them for private messaging.

I have found a few that are not blocked.

These work:

☀️⭐️

I wonder if the emojis that do work are related to early emoji sets.

https://blog.emojipedia.org/correcting-the-record-on-the-first-emoji-set/

Perhaps AirBnB isn't blocking them. Perhaps they just haven't implemented some of the later character sets. (Although any excuses for not doing so would be poor. It's trivial. )

While we wait for full support, I'd love to have a full list of the subset of emojis which actually work in messaging. 

Anyone else want to help compile a full list of supported emojis?